Peer pressure - good, bad or indifferent

OK, I want to start by acknowledging that yesterday's phone call from Mr. Fabulous probably wasn't as funny as I thought it was when it happened. I thought about deleting the entry, but realized that if I second guess every entry after I post it, this blog will go nowhere. So, there you go. No do-overs.

On to today's thoughts. I've been thinking about peer pressure - usually thought to be bad, but is it always? I don't think so. My three year old daughter, the Cutest Thing in the whole world, in my (unbiased) opinion, LOVES dresses. To the point of throwing fits if she is forced by below-freezing temperatures to wear jeans. I believe this stems, at least in part from the fact that everyone says "Oh, what a cute dress" every time she wears one.

In the fit-throwing moments, I get frustrated and want to say “it doesn’t matter if your clothes are cute – they just need to be warm.”  This whole caring what other people think was so foreign to me when I was young.  In fact, I used to be proud of the fact that I didn’t care about what people thought.  However, to be honest, it is probably truer to say that I didn’t notice what people thought.  I lived in a little mental bubble of my own creation and took no notice of what was going on around me.  As you would expect, I was a very odd child.

However, at some point in my life, I realized that caring – that noticing – what people think about you is the basis for the social skills that you need to be a functioning part of society.  I still struggle with many of the social niceties that seem to come so naturally to others.  I guess I’m grateful that Miss C.T. will probably not have the same difficulties “fitting in” that I had growing up.  Of course, she will have different difficulties that I will have to try to help her to navigate.  I imagine the use of the phrase "if all of your friends jumped off of a cliff . . ." is to be expected on several occasions in the future.  But, in the meantime, I guess I’ll just keep a look-out for cute, warm, winter dresses.